Shape building is one of the primary techniques used to create illustrations in digital content. A user, for instance, may interact with an illustration processing system of a computing device to build shapes to create icons, logos, and so forth. Shapes may take a variety of forms, such as rectangles, circles, ovals, stars, polygons, and so forth.
Operations may also be supported by the illustration processing system to process these shapes to form even more complex shapes. In one example, a merge operation is performed by the computing device to combine two or more shapes into a single shape in a user interface, e.g., to combine two circles and a rectangle to form a barbell shape. In another example, a delete operation is performed by the computing device to remove all or a portion of a shape within the user interface, e.g., to remove a non-overlapping portion of a first shape with respect to a second shape to form a multi-colored first shape. In a further example, a punch out operation is performed to remove an interior portion (i.e., “fill”) of a shape such that a background of the digital content is viewable through that portion.
Conventional techniques used to initiate and perform these operations, however, involve a multi-step workflow that may be difficult to understand and implement by casual users. For example, conventional techniques require the user to explicitly indicate the particular operation to be performed. This is performed in conventional techniques through use of a unique key combination or by first locating a representation of the operation in a menu in a user interface and then selecting the representation. These conventional techniques also require the user to separately indicate which shape or shapes in the user interface are to be subject to the indicated operation, e.g., by then selecting shapes by “clicking” or “circling” the shapes in a user interface. After receipt of this series of separate inputs from the user, the computing device then performs the operation. Thus, these conventional techniques typically require the user to perform a series of steps that involve specialized knowledge (e.g., the key combination) or require the user to navigate back and forth between the digital content and the menu, which is inefficient and potentially frustrating to the user.
Further, conventional techniques to perform these operations break definitions of constituent shapes involved in the operation to define a single resulting shape. For example, a delete operation may be performed to remove a portion of a first shape that does not intersect a second shape, thereby leaving the intersecting portion of the first shape and the second shape in the user interface. In a conventional delete operation, however, the second shape and the intersecting portion are then defined as a single shape in the user interface as a result of this operation. Consequently, this conventional delete operation prevents the user from interacting with the computing device to further modify the constituent shapes, separately, using these operations but rather is limited to interaction with the single resulting shape. The user, for instance, is not provided with an ability to interact with the second shape and the intersecting portion separately and thus is limited from use of further operations in conventional shape building techniques.